Watershed Characterisation and Management Planning of Harike Wetland Using Remote Sensing and GIS Approach

Abstract

Wetlands are among the world s most productive ecosystems and offer several newlinebeneficial services for man, fish and other wildlife. Despite the numerous valuable newlineservices provided by wetlands, they are overexploited throughout the world and newlineparticularly in developing countries. Hence their conservation and management has newlinebecome a serious issue; and to restore them, conservational efforts at watershed newlinelevel are most appropriate. Watershed planning approach adopted for wetland newlinerestoration provides dynamic benefits by restoring ecological processes and newlineconserve water and soil resource integrity. In the present study, an attempt has been newlinemade to carry out a comprehensive analysis of Harike wetland and its catchment for newlinevarious conservational measures and its sustainable management. The whole study newlinearea has been divided into 5 watershed basins, which were further subdivided into newline25 sub-watersheds using Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data in newlineconjunction with topographical maps of the study area. newlineMorphometric parameters including linear parameters such as Stream number, newlineStream order (U), Stream Length (LU), Mean stream length (Lsm), Stream length newlineratio (RL), Bifurcation Ratio (Rb ); relief parameters such as Basin relief (Bh), Relief newlineRatio (Rh ), Ruggedness Number (Rn), Gradient ratio (Gh), Dissection index (Di); newlineand aerial parameters namely: Drainage density (Dd), Drainage texture (T), Stream newlineiv newlinefrequency (Fs), Form factor (Rf), Circulatory ratio (Rc), Elongation ratio (Re), Length newlineof overland flow (Lg) and Constant channel maintenance(C) have been analysed to newlinecharacterise the study area. The Morphometric analysis results revealed that study newlinearea as a whole has 7th stream order drainage basin as per the Strahler method. The newlinesub-watershed SWS11 and SWS12 showed the smallest and largest basin area of newline68.17 and 328.25 Km2 respectively. Among 25 sub-watersheds, SWS15 exhibit newlinehighest mean bifurcation ratio of 6.16. The drainage system of the basin is coarse newlinewith permeable subsurface strata and having moderate to